is the thought of a unicorn a real thought?

einstein never stopped breathing because he couldn't reconcile his atoms.
i've never been so good at daily life, which is to say that i'm not a good enough taoist,
that i'm not very zen, that i can't just embrace the chaos and in doing so say 'there is no chaos.'
in a grander scheme, sure, i get it. life is a series of collisions and so on and take a deep breath.
and then move on.

but i can't accept chaos on an atomic level, the idea that the second we stop looking, there are no rules. i can play a game of chaos chess with the best of them, and sweeping my piece onto the floor or knocking over my cup of coffee declare that "I--" because what i've done isn't important, and when there are no rules, it's not about winning or losing, or even being or ceasing to exist, it just is, or isn't, depending on how you look at it or don't. but then i know that it's a game, and thereby just an illusion, and i can accept the unreality of an illusion but not the unreality of the stuff of which the illusion is made, the matter of the illusion. because on a fundamental level, things fall apart.

say that you were making a movie. of your life, your family, your job, or anything about which you would possibly alter your version of the truth and fictionalize. well, when you watch the film, you know that it's not real, and that it's just a depiction of the real thing. that's easy to accept-- you can see your own part in making the illusion. but then suppose that you find out that the digital camcorder, the firewire cable, the computer you used to edit, the hands you used to hold the camera, the eye you used to focus, the sound waves that put everyone on their marks-- none of it is real. suppose you're sitting one day happily watching your fictional video and then everything that had a part in making the film just disintegrated. poof. crumbled into nothingness right before your eyes. well, then the question arises-- how the hell did you make the video in the first place, if there was never a camera, never hands, never sound waves?